Flori Pharma: maintaining ethics in an unethical sales environment

Territory Manager Naveed Khan’s email (Exhibit 1), which arrived one evening in March 2017, was a lightning bolt for Bilal Dahar, the chief executive officer of pharmaceutical company Flori Pharma Private Limited. The email highlighted the concerns regarding target-achieving pressures and unethical practices in pharmaceutical companies. This was not the first time that he had received such types of emails from anonymous persons, and he usually ignored them, but this time he could not, as recently these issues had compelled a sales representative of an Indian leading pharmaceutical company to commit suicide[1]. Dahar realized that this has not remained an ordinary issue as his star performer, territory manager, must be communicating in the favor of all territory managers. When Dahar was thinking of potential means to come up with the solutions of concerns raised in the email, Zaheer Babar, Vice President Marketing, entered in the office, looking worried and having employee files in the hand.